To copy files, Stanway merely plugged the drive into one of the vacant USB ports on the back of his system unit. The computer’s operating system automatically recognized the drive, and all he then had to do was use Windows Explorer to drag the selected files to the USB drive. And doing everything by using the mouse ensured that there were no keystrokes to be recorded, even if a keystroke logger had been loaded on his machine without his knowledge.
Once the drive was full, he removed it from the port, tucked it away inside his special pen, and left it in one of the dead-letter drops — what the Russians call ‘duboks’ — on his way home from Vauxhall Cross. Lomas would collect it later that evening, and leave an identical, but empty, drive in the same location, which Stanway could collect at leisure.
The pen was now back in the pocket of Stanway’s suit jacket, but holding three ink cartridges in the second chamber instead of the USB drive.
He picked up his briefcase and his new mobile phone, still in its box, and took the lift down to the ground floor of the building. There was a small utility room there, adjacent to the lift. Stanway put his briefcase on the floor, reached into his pocket and pulled out a bunch of keys. He selected one and unlocked the door.
He stepped inside, put the mobile phone box on a small workbench that ran along the left side of the room, opened the box and removed the phone and its charger. He plugged the charger into the wall socket, connected the other end of the lead to the phone itself, switched on at the socket and checked that the phone was charging properly. Then he took the box, crushed it beneath his feet to flatten it, and slid it into his briefcase. He would dispose of it somewhere convenient on his way to work.
He was, he realized, perhaps being a little overcautious. After all, there was nothing illegal in owning a pay-as-you-go mobile phone, but he knew that the Security Service would see that as suspicious, not least because he already possessed a mobile. That was why he had decided to charge the phone here in the utility room, just in case somebody from ‘The Box’ was planning on visiting this building while he was out at work. They might well decide to search his apartment, but he doubted that they would bother searching the rest of the building.
He would just wait them out, he decided, as he re-locked the utility room door and pocketed the keys. Once Lomas had either confirmed that a clerk had run from Moscow, and could compromise him, or discovered that the whole story was a fiction — simply an operation designed to flush him out by making him panic and run — then Stanway would decide what he had to do next. And if there was some frightened little clerk skulking around Europe clutching a bag of papers that could incriminate him, Stanway knew exactly what he would have to do to eliminate the threat.
Holbeche had reached his office late, having been due to leave Vauxhall Cross for an off-site meeting at nine-thirty that morning, but after he’d taken a look at two classified files, flagged ‘Flash’, he decided to delay his departure by half an hour and called Simpson just after nine-forty.
‘There’s been no approach to the Moscow embassy,’ he announced, after getting through on the secure line.
‘I wasn’t expecting one,’ Simpson replied. ‘Whoever our mole is, he’s probably a reasonably experienced intelligence officer, not to mention an experienced spy, and there’s no way someone like that is going to ring up the embassy just to ask if the story about the clerk is true. He would be certain that we’d have taps on all the lines out of Vauxhall Cross, and he would hardly try to use his home phone either. You have already placed taps, I presume?’
‘Yes,’ Holbeche replied. ‘Arkin has arranged for taps to be placed on the home phones of all SIS officers, apart from those belonging to the most junior grades, who simply don’t have the access needed.’
There was a lot of misinformation in the public domain about telephone tapping in Britain. The official position, trotted out every time anybody asked the question, was that whenever the Security Service MI5 wished to install a telephone tap, the request had to be submitted to the Home Secretary in person, who would read it and then, if he approved, sign the authorizing warrant. The SIS was required to follow a similar procedure, but their requests were submitted instead to the Foreign Secretary. Each warrant was subject to a monthly review, and a further or extended warrant would only be approved if the requesting organization could manage to convince their particular Secretary that continuing the surveillance could be justified.
The physical installation of telephone taps and other bugging devices was carried out by a security division within British Telecom, and taps would not be installed unless a proper warrant was produced. This rule might be relaxed if it could be demonstrated that the case was extremely urgent or had grave security implications — for example, if the phone is believed to be currently used by active terrorists — but, even then, the authorizing warrant had to be submitted to British Telecom within forty-eight hours of the tap being placed.
Comforting though the above procedures might be to the innocent citizens of Great Britain, the reality of the situation was somewhat different.
First, the Echelon monitoring system — a joint automated-surveillance system operated primarily by the intelligence services of Britain, America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — monitored every international telephone call that originated in, terminated in, or passed through any of the participating countries. It also monitored emails and faxes within the same broad geographical area.
Second, and rather more worrying to anyone with the slightest interest in personal liberty and freedom of speech, Special Branch, which was the executive arm of the Security Service, had the authority to request the installation of a tap or a bug on a telephone line of a suspected criminal without reference to the Home Secretary, just by applying to a senior British Telecom official. Special Branch officers, even without specific direction from the Security Service, were perfectly capable of interpreting the term ‘suspected criminal’ in its loosest possible sense. Practically speaking, therefore, MI5 could actually tap the telephone of pretty much anyone they wanted to, for as long as they wanted to, without the Home Secretary or anyone else even being aware of it.
‘There has been some other activity here, though,’ Holbeche said.
‘Oh, yes?’
‘Cheltenham has reported some slightly unusual signal traffic between London and Moscow this morning on the usual circuits.’
‘A known code?’ Simpson asked. ‘Or one they can read?’
‘No,’ Holbeche replied. ‘It was a single message in a high-level cipher that has never been broken, but which is frequently used for extended-length transmissions to Moscow.’
‘So what was unusual about it, then?’
‘As I said, this cipher is normally used for high-volume traffic, long transmissions which GCHQ has always presumed was just the usual diplomatic waffle. But this message was really short, just a few groups, according to Cheltenham.’
Simpson remained silent for a few moments. ‘Maybe,’ he then said slowly, ‘just maybe Cheltenham’s take on this is wrong. The short message could have been a simple request for confirmation of the missing-clerk story from Moscow Centre. If it was, that means two things. First, it means that our mole… our file on this breach is “Egret Seven”, and we’ve code-named the source of the leak “Gecko” by the way. It means our mole has attended one of the briefings already given, which means he’s a very senior officer indeed, and much more dangerous than we thought. Second, it suggests that the previous high-volume traffic might not just have been a bunch of diplomats exchanging off-colour jokes and party invitations. Instead, it might have been stuff that the London SVR rezident has already received from the mole, and which he was then transmitting to Moscow. In which case—’